Bruno Waterfield has been the Brussels correspondent for the Telegraph since 2007. He has been reporting on politics and European affairs for over 13 years, first from Westminster and then from Brussels since January 2003.

The current phase of institutional stability is all well and good if you are the status quo but the continuing strangulation of the economy is the daily reality for Europe's peoples.

In the curly-wurly, topsy-turvy, back-to-front, upside down, just plain wrong world of Ireland’s politicians EU-IMF serfdom is in fact presented as freedom.

“We spent an awful lot of time getting our freedom and getting our authority to run our own affairs. There’s not much point in having political freedom if you don’t have economic and financial freedom,” said Michael Noonan, the Irish finance minister today.

The Irish have reinvented national liberation as obedience to external paymasters. Horrible. Perverse.

Eurozone elites lavish praise on each other for bowing to the EU-IMF diktats after bravely sacrificing their peoples to the irrational absurdities of Maastricht.

It is all a great success story if you live on planet EU but Dublin’s streets have not been filled with cheering crowds as the Irish people continue to pay a heavy price for saving the euro.

Success? Only in the warped world of the eurozone. Ireland's budget deficit is still 7.3 per cent of GDP. Public debt, racked up to save banks at the ECB’s bidding, is 123pc. Household debt is 200 pc of income and a 57pc drop in house prices has big implications for personal wealth.

Unemployment is coming down but still high at over 13 per cent (for under-25s it is 28pc) but at a price for families as from April of 2012 to April this year, alone, a record high of 89,000 people left Ireland.

Emigration, a historical blight for Ireland (to the benefit of Britain and America) is being driven by EU dictated austerity measures such as recent decisions to cut unemployment benefits for young people and reductions to the minimum wage (a specific ask from Brussels).

Ireland, once a proud nation, is now the austerity and eurozone poster pin-up for policies that are continuing to ravage Europe’s economies.

The game is given away by the lavish praise from Olli Rehn, a Finnish nobody (a former MEP for Chrissakes) who as EU monetary affairs commissioner is now more powerful than Ireland’s prime minister.

“Graduation from the programme will send a very clear signal to markets and international lenders that the adjustment effort undertaken in Ireland, with the support of its European and international partners, has paid off.

In short, today is a good day for Ireland and the Irish people. It provides clear evidence that determined implementation of a comprehensive reform agenda can decisively turn around a country's economic fortunes,” he said.

Ireland is being celebrated for living on its knees and for acquiescing in its own sacrifice on the euro’s altar. This is what the eurozone means.

* On the centenary of the Dublin lock out, Desmoulins via James Connolly, a great Irish freedom fighter.